Facebook, Bing teams up to give online search a social touch

Facebook users using Bing will see their friends’ like popping up when they run their Bing searches while logged into their Facebook account. In addition, while searching for friends in Bing, they will have people with common Facebook friends topping the search result.

The move is a result of Microsoft’s decision of adding input from users’ Facebook data to the results the Bing search pulls up. According to a Facebook spokesperson, the service is already available to two percent of Facebook users in the U.S. and it will be available to the rest in coming weeks.
Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Online Services Division, said that search has become more personalized and social today. Hence, while searching a user must also look at the connections between people. The process of connecting to information can be more personal and useful by using a social layer, said Nadella.

There will be two new features in Bing – ‘Liked Results’ and ‘Facebook Profile Search’. ‘Liked Results’ will show what the user’s friends like when he/she launches an online search while in Facebook. On the other hand, ‘Facebook Profile Search’ narrows down the search by listing people who share mutual Facebook friends with the searcher at the top of the results.

Both Microsoft and Facebook are saying that that they’ll safeguard users’ privacy as it is the most important priority. In its ‘Instant Personalization’ project, Facebook has teamed up with several partners apart from Bing including Rotten Tomatoes, Docs.com, Pandora, Yelp and Scribd. All of them are bound to follow Facebook’s guidelines and can only use subscribers’ public information.

As per Facebook’s terms and conditions, a user should be 13 years of age to access its services, while Bing’s Facebook Profile Search can be used by those users who list themselves as 18 years or older in their Facebook profiles.